Close call
If nothing else Saturday's referendum on membership of the EU in 2004 produced a good promotion line for the island's tourist industry - Malta, where everyone is a winner. In games theory, economists call the interpretation of the result a win-win...
If nothing else Saturday's referendum on membership of the EU in 2004 produced a good promotion line for the island's tourist industry - Malta, where everyone is a winner. In games theory, economists call the interpretation of the result a win-win outcome. Some distance away from Sunday's heat, what can one really make of it?
Opinion first: I feel that those who, like myself, wanted a clear yes had hoped for a higher absolute total than the one actually delivered. The point is not really the formal outcome, stated in the established relationship between votes cast and the total of valid votes yielded by the ballot boxes. In the circumstances, it is about how clear is the expression of the Maltese people of their intent regarding EU membership.
The position adopted by the Labour Party - mark the vote with a no, or spoil it, or abstain - was quite clever as a political stance, allowing any sort of interpretation of the outcome. It left the onus on the yes total to prove itself, though to claim, as the opposition leader did, that any vote other than a yes vote - those cast, spoiled or, for not cast for whatever reason - was a vote in favour of his option of staying out of the EU, stretches credulity to breaking point.
The statistical facts next: what do the figures say? I am including a table which I constructed from the actual figures of the outturn, to which I then made an adjustment. The first part of the table sets out the total of voters on the electoral register issued last October. The total is out of date. Some voters will have died. New voters would have come of age. Yet that total, issued in April and October, is the starting base in any electoral exercise.
The next lines in the table are self-explanatory and have been heard or read a thousand times over the past two days. They show that, on the basis of the traditional measurement of the polls - votes as a percentage of the total decreed valid by the electoral commissioners - the yes element was 53.65 per cent. Had the referendum been legally binding, instead of consultative, or if EU enlargement had to precede the general election by a reasonable time, that is what would count.
Since neither conditions holds, one should relate the yes total to more politically correct bases. The first one is also in the upper part of the table. It relates the yes total to the number of votes cast. That takes into account the invalid votes as well, accepting them as a result of the Labour directive and ignoring the fact that in any voting there are a number of invalid votes. That gives a proportion of 52.87 per cent to the yes total. The next line relates the yes figure to the total number of registered voters. The resulting proportion, as the no lobby was quick to point out, is 48.04 per cent.
The adjustment in the last part of the table starts from the assumption that one should be credible and relate analysis to observable evidence. It is an observable fact that it is never the case that all those on the electoral register at election time do actually vote. Some would have died, others would be too ill to go out to vote, or happen to be unavoidably abroad. Another element would just not be bothered to vote, or wants to make a point by keeping the voting document in a drawer.
In recent elections the average of those who did vote stood at about 95 per cent. Of those votes cast, there has regularly been an element of invalid votes, of under one per cent. (It was higher in 1998.)
In the adjustment in the bottom part of the table I have ignored that element and recast the yes vote against 95 per cent of the total of registered voters. That yields a yes proportion of 50.57 per cent.
Does that figure it all out? Not really. That is left to the general election on April 12 to tackle. But, one reflection: there was some cross-voting on Saturday, though I would say not much. Probably more Labourites voted yes than Nationalists no. In the general election, most from each side will go back to the fold. The yes total also includes Alternattiva Demokratika preferences which in a general election will probably go back to it.
The 50.57 per cent yes estimate in my table makes the election outcome look too close to call.